My daughter is a huge fan of Paw Patrol. So, of course, she chose a Paw Patrol themed 4th birthday party. I have had a lot of fun making my kids themed birthday cakes in the past, but this one worried me. Making a specific character that actually looks good is a lot harder than a castle cake or a seashell cake. So, I tried to simplify a Paw Patrol cake as much as possible. My daughter’s requests were that it was pink and had all the main Paw Patrol pups on it.
My first attempt did not turn out. But, I will still go into details on it at the end, because I still think it had potential. Then, I simplified it even more and came up with the pictured design. I made mine in the shape of a 4, but the same design could be adapted to any shape. My daughter chose strawberry cake, but once again, you can use whatever flavor of cake your kid likes best.
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How to Make a Paw Patrol Cake
Materials:
- Cake pan (I used this fun letter and number pan)
- Cake mix or cake ingredients
- Frosting or frosting ingredients
- Pink food dye
- Icing spatula
- 2 Piping bags
- Piping tip
- Badge and dog bone cookie cutters (optional)
- Toothpicks
- Candles
Making the Cake:
To start, you need to make your Paw Patrol cake base. As I mentioned above, you can make whatever flavor and shape that you want. My daughter wanted strawberry and I followed this recipe from Sugar Geek Show. To get the four shape, I used this really cool pan that makes any letter or number.
Making the Frosting:
Next, make your frosting. Dye most of it pink and leave a little of it white. If you are following the same recipe as me, leave out the strawberry reduction. Then, put some of it aside before adding the strawberry reduction and some pink food dye. I guess I was so busy making my cake that I didn’t do a very good job of taking pictures along the way. But, once my 4 shaped cake cooled, I cut it in half and frosted a middle layer of the pink strawberry buttercream.
Decorating the Paw Patrol Cake:
Now is the time to decorate. First, frost the entire cake in your pink frosting using an icing spatula. Make sure you save a bit of pink frosting in a piping bag.
Then, place your white frosting in a piping bag with a simple circular piping tip. Next, pipe your decorations onto your Paw Patrol cake. I pressed a badge and dog bone shaped cookie cutter on to my cake to give me an outline to pipe around. Once I finished with the dog bone and badge, I freehanded the white dog paw prints.
Now that the white is done, switch to your pink piping bag. Then, pipe the name of your child on the dog bone and the age they are turning on the pup badge.
Lastly, add the paper pup decorations. Print the pup toppers from Nickelodeon Parents, cut them out, and tape them to toothpicks. I stuck mine in the cake along with 4 pink candles right before we sang Happy Birthday.
Alternate Idea:
Even thought it didn’t work out, I wanted to share my first idea with you. First, I was going to frost it with the same pink frosting. Then, I wanted to put cookies on top that looked like the pups and their badges. I made sugar cookies and used 3d printed cookie cutters to cut them out in the shape of pup faces and badges. If you don’t have access to a 3d printer, you can buy similar cookie cutters here. All of this went according to plan.
Next, I wanted to frost the cookies with royal icing and color them with these neat edible ink markers. I left them out for a whole day, but for some reason my icing didn’t dry hard enough. The pens just went right into them. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to remake them. So, let me know in the comments if you try this method and how it turns out for you.
If my cookies had turned out, this was the design idea that I had drawn out. I wanted to make sure that everything would fit. Also, I wanted to practice using the limited number of colors that my edible ink markers came in.
Conclusion of My Daughter’s Birthday Paw Patrol Cake
While the cake didn’t look like what I first planned, I was still really happy with how it turned out. My daughter was very excited about how pink it was and loved that all the pups were on it. But, she decided that she no longer wanted strawberry cake and didn’t like it. I won’t be making that recipe for her again.
If you are throwing your own Paw Patrol party, make sure you check out my other Paw Patrol party ideas. And if you want more fun cake ideas, check out the cakes I have made for past birthdays.
